Tag Archives: invitations

I have posted my video for the Harry Potter Party Invitations over on YouTube, or you can watch it here. I show the fun fold I did for the invitation itself. This might help you if you are having any trouble.

I hope that my post and video help inspire you to create your own party invitations. You can view the original post here.

Today I will be continuing my posts on our Harry Potter Party and we will be talking about the invitations! Now don’t get me wrong, I love online invitations, they are so quick and easy and you know when people see them but there is really nothing that can possibly compare to receiving a custom handmade invitation in the mail. Maybe I am a little biased, seeing that I have been a card maker for over 20 years.

Harry Potter Party Invitations

These invitations were a huge hit. I got so many positive comments from the parents and kiddos alike. So, if you are planning your own Harry Potter Party I think that it is worth the time and effort to make your own. It just sets the tone for the whole event. The invitations that I will be showing you today are addressed to Harry Potter but each guest received an invitation that was personalized for them.

Letter in the software

I did a fair bit of research into the different Harry Potter invitations that people had made and cobbled together these. I create a letter that invited the guests to attend a preview day at Hogwarts in honor of the birthday girl. Once I had exhausted the internet, I drafted my letter and added a Hogwarts logo at the top and printed them on parchment paper.

Harry Party Potter Invitation Letter

I used the font Lumos for the header and the font Magik for the body. For Professor McGonagall’s signature, I used Scriptina. The font on the envelopes is called 4 Privet Drive. There are a ton of fonts out there but I thought that these worked.

Next, came the envelopes. Again I laid them out on my computer and then printed them onto parchment paper. I purchased an Envelope Punch Board for this project. In the end, I created a 4″x6″ envelope.

Envelope ready to be printed

To create the 4″x6″ envelope I trimmed my paper to 8 1/4″ x 8 1/4″. You can see in this screenshot how that looked in the software. Once I printed each letter I trimmed them to size. I then used the Envelope Punch Board to create the envelope. The step-by-step photos are below.

Envelope:

Envelope printed on 8 1/2″ x 11

Trimmed to 8 1/4″ squareLine up on the Envelope Punch Board at 3 3/8″Punch and score

Rotate and repeatAll four sides punched and scoredUse the back side of the punch to round the cornersAll done with the scoring and punchingGlue (I used a glue stick)

I had a weird problem with my letter. When I went to fold my 8 1/5″ x11″ piece of paper to fit in my library card envelope I couldn’t get it to fold nicely. I enlisted the assistance of my engineer hubby and we spent an hour folding and refolding paper. After much trial and error and online research, we came up with the following fold.

Letter Folding

Trimmed to 8 1/2″ x 10 1/2″

First, I had to trim my paper down to 8 1/2″ x 10 1/5″. I took a little off the top and a little off the bottom.

Starting the fold – Rotate 90 degreesFold top corner to the center.

When you make this fold you are trying to make the folded piece straight on both sides.

Rotate 180 DegreesFold top corner to center

Repeat with the opposite corner. This fold works best when these to corner folds do not overlap but come very close

Turn Vertically

Now I turned the paper this way, it is just what works for me. I now take the point that is facing me and fold it up. Keeping the sides even, creating a rectangle.

Fold the bottom upCrisp up those folds

I use a bone folder to crisp up my folds. Now I turn this around again and fold the two points over.

Rotate and fold the points down.

You should now have a super fancy looking rectangle. I printed my tickets and trimmed them.

Platform 9 3/4 Ticket

I slipped one ticket in each letter. If you want to print your own here is the link.

Ticket in the letter

I also wanted to create an inner envelope for the invitations. This little envelope is called a library card envelope. I used black cardstock, a 1″ circle punch and my scoreboard to create these. Below you will find the step-by-step directions.

Now I was ready to put it all together. The letters were folded to fit in the black envelopes and the tickets were placed in the middle of the letters. Then the smaller envelopes were placed in the parchment envelopes. The last step was adding the wax seal. I had ordered a kit for these and they were a huge hit. There is clearly some plastic in the wax because they are flexible and didn’t break in the mail.

Place letter and ticket in the library card envelopeAssembled – a perfect fitFold top downGlue and add wax seal

A lot of work but totally worth it! I did video one of these and will be working on adding that!